An interesting read on what you have to deal with when the nearest Trader Joe’s, HEB, or Safeway is hundreds (or thousands) of miles away.
Have you actually done menu planning for The End Of The World? I mean, I know you’ve got all sorts of stored food, but have you actually thought about what a particular meal, say breakfast, would look like? I have. For me, breakfast looks like the following:
- Oatmeal, Cream of What, Cornmeal porridge
- Scrambled eggs
- Hash browns
- Corned beef hash
- Pork chops
- Orange drink
- Biscuits
- Strawberries, blueberries, bananas
- Instant milk
Thats actually a better breakfast than what I eat now. See, it isn’t enough to just throw back an assortment of storage food. You have to give some thought to what sort of menus youre going to be looking at. How many different breakfasts can you do? Lunches? Sinners? Snacks?
For some ideas, I have always recommended this website and it’s very impressive list of ‘storage food recipes’: http://safelygatheredin2.blogspot.com/2008/11/alphabetical-recipe-list.html
But the important thing to take away from the article listed above is that you have to plan out what your meals will be if you have any hope of efficiently and economically getting your food storage squared away. Go plan a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How many ingredients ‘cross over’ to other meals? Figure it out, get the most variety and utility from the least amount of items. Its a good exercise.
I like the website…but no activity since 2013. Are they still around somewhere else?
Kudos.
This, X 10.
A coupla years back, when temporary circumstances (job change belt tightening) met “I wonder how this is going to work out on the day?”, I lived on some of my storage food for a month.
Rice or beans and beef, or chicken, or tuna, was great.
(Those Costco beef and chicken cans are good for two people/can, or two meals/can, FWIW. But you have to have a storage lid, or tin foil to seal the can.)
But having worcestershire sauce, teriyaki, hot sauce, etc., took a bland meal to a great one. Or, not, if it ran out.
I had planned out turkey SPAM, or canned ham, and included yams, cranberry sauce, canned corn, etc. to make a mini feast once every couple of weeks. Worked great.
Breakfast and lunch were easier.
Brekkie: Oatmeal or cereal, dehydrated scrambled eggs, dried fruits, powdered milk, OJ/Tang, sugar, honey, cinnamon. (Like you said, better than I eat now some days).
Lunch: tuna, PB&J, more dried and canned fruits, nuts, lemonade and gatorade powder, etc. IOW, backpacker food.
Most missed: didn’t have enough stored condiments and spices(!!), and hadn’t made accommodation to have bread items, or flour, or wheat to grind into flour, to make bread, noodles, cakes, biscuits, cookies, pancakes/waffles, etc., beyond a few tins of crackers.
And had veggies, dessert fruit, etc., but needed more than what I had stored.
So afterwards, I planned out a full 4 week menu.
And then just added another month’s worth, block by block.
Goal: 5-7 years’ worth.
I’m just shy of halfway there.
Not counting things like Mountain House/backpacking stashes, MREs, and literal lifeboat survival rations for car and bug-out bags.
Hard candy treats last longer than canned food, BTW, with 0 loss of utility.
Got grain and grain mills, plural. (H/t to you for the LDS cannery resource nearby for buckets of unprocessed wheat.)
Next three to-dos are breadmaking for the stored wheat to make into flour, then a sourdough “mother”, and learning how to make everything on the everyday table (incl. ketchup, mustard, mayo, tartar sauce, salad dressings, etc.) from scratch, using basic raw ingredients.
(Had a salad at work one night, someone had cleverly thrown out all the usual bottles of dressings in the communal fridge, and found out in a pinch that honey mustard dressing is two packets of Der Weinerschnitzel mustard and two KFC honey packets from the leftover drawer, stirred vigorously. It sure beat dry lettuce and tomatoes.)
Because then I can extrapolate, for example, from tomatoes per bottle of ketchup, to bottles of ketchup per year, to how much salt, vinegar, etc., and tomato harvest each year’s supply would require, and all the tastier for fresh home-grown ingredients and no extra chemicals and preservatives.
Professionals talk logistics. 😉
What stands out to me in Bree’s article is the transportation issue she points out. When I look at the mountain of preps that must weigh literally a few tons, the task of packing it all up and moving seems monumental. At best it would be unwieldy, impossible in the worst case.
Realistically, my 2021 1/2 ton F150 short bed 4×4 with a small utility trailer AND my wife’s Toyota Highlander wouldn’t likely accommodate half of our preps, water, Berky filter, guns, ammo, dogs, tools, sleeping bags, tent(s) and luggage. Most of it will probably have to be left behind.
So the pallets of ammo, boxes of magazines, 5 gal. buckets of rice, beans, sugar and flour would most likely be orphaned in the bunker room should the shells start flying like they did in Ukraine.
Gotta pre-position, man. It’s tempting to keep all your eggs in one basket when you don’t know own if you’re gonna stay or go, but when you gotta go…nice to have a large portion of it already there.
‘Fleeing to the hills’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘I will be a refugee living in a shanty made of cardboard, scrap lumber and plastic wrap.’
Also, good to think about the next meal and your ability to store fresh-cooked meals in a fridge (or not as grid power issues occur).
In my Grandmothers day folks would cover the dinner table with the tablecloth as to keep flies off it until it was breakfast.
Not the best option. Sour bellies were a not so uncommon event. Still so in many 3rd world places I’ve worked at.
At my deer camp we used to keep a Hunters Stew going and assigned the duty of keeping the fire low and the pot from running dry. If it went dry on your shift, YOU had to scrub the pot of the crusties.
Flavor changed over the week or so of deer camp but kept hot and ready for the “I’m Hungry “moments.
A few hundred watts of solar allows you the pleasure of a small chest freezer (very low wattage) a dorm sized fridge, some box fans and LED lights.
My small solar setup was really nice when the storm KO’ed the grid for a day last week. No food loss, and fans 🙂
By meal planning you can save a bunch of money , We have been doing that for years , When you shop for what you only need for the meals then you can take advantage of any in store special to add to the pantry without blowing your food budget for the month or add to your emergency fund with anything not spent in the budget .
Wrt condiments and spices, most common condiments in the US have some precursors that you need to master too, or stack, mainly vinegar. And there are powdered versions of some things (dry mustard, Ranch dressing) that store really well.
When I started building up my pantry, I SERIOUSLY overestimated the amount of ketchup, prepared mustard, and Miracle Whip to store. I will say, even though it is years past ‘best by’, and the color has changed (MW turns grey, Heinz low sugar Ketchup darkens) the taste and edibility is fine.
Spices are more abundant and available now than any time, ever. The average American probably has what used to be a king’s ransom (literally) of spices in their cabinet. But they don’t last long as they are usually packaged. The aromatics especially weaken pretty quickly on a prepping time scale.
If anyone has any experience with long term storage, maybe vac sealed in mylar, I’m looking to restock my spice rack and I’d love to do it in a way that will preserve the bulk of it.
n
I have used a food saver/vacuum sealer with canning jars to long-term store spices, dry goods, even crackers and cereal. I have got 10 years or more out of some batches (avoid any crackers made with oil). Here is a youtube link that has a lady showing how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biMgUOdJXV4
When you buy spices in bulk at Costco etc, do not leave the contents in situ. Might consider breaking it up into small vacuum baggies, and put it back in the original container (probably wont all fit).
I had a large container of various flaked/dried peppers with onions, garlic etc from there. Pop-top container. Got really old, and due to a concussion a few years ago, I can’t smell bad food. Ended up with a mild case of food poisoning. The lump in the bottom shook like jello. Not a good sign!
One result of the Panicdemic(see article about Pottinger the China specialist who push panic in WH and Birx+Fauchi profiting) has been the disruption of supply chains and the 6-8week sale cycles at stores that allowed easy stocking of food preps on top of seasonal warehouse clearances(new supply coming in, old supply goes). Hungry people are easier to control,to a point-Hunger Games vs Soylent Green(send in the scoops).